The Last Tree

Lexi Cinema & RDF Partnership Fundraiser

 A special screening of 'The Last Tree' hosted by RDF with Intro and After-Film Conversation on the issues highlighted in the film - between local residents Olapeju Coker (Community Outreach Worker) and Roger Diamond (Charity Founder). Event Date: 22nd October 2019.

The Last Tree

"A hard-hitting, powerful cinematic experience. Educational and relevant to the fears and concerns of Londoners and parents on so many unexpected levels" Roger Diamond.

Young Femi has been placed in care with a kindly foster mother in Lincolnshire. He has good mates and someone for whom he is the centre of their world.  It's all turned upside down when his birth mother comes to reclaim him and take him back to a life of harsh parenting, poverty and daily strife at the local secondary school. Femi - now played by exceptional newcomer Sam Adewunmi - turns into a truculent and monosyllabic teen, full of anger towards the mother who expects him to behave like a dutiful Nigerian son.  When local hood Mace takes Femi up as his muscle, Femi confronts some tough choices about life as a young black man.

This is the second feature from talented writer/director Shola Amoo, and he's drawing on some of his own childhood experiences.  If the plot sounds at all schematic, it really is not.  Story and character feel nuanced and fresh, the soundtrack is suitably unsettling, and the excellent camerawork finds a level of poetry in views of the grim cityscape.  It's a rich and rewarding picture of the complexity of being not only young, black and male in London, but also of the tensions from a cross-cultural inheritance. It's a rare good 'un!

Trailer: 

• Written & Directed By: Shola Amoo
•  Duration: 99 minutes - Film ends 20:20 - Announcements end 20:35 APPX.
• Cerificate: 15

Tickets - SOLD OUT

Special discounted tickets of £10. This event is now closed.

Lexi Cinema is located in Kensal Rise, and is easily accessible by numerous forms of transport. 

The Lexi Cinema
194b Chamberlayne Road
Kensal Rise
London NW10 3JU

Overground:  Kensal Rise (3 mins)
Tube:  Bakerloo line, Kensal Green (10 mins), Queens Park (15 mins)
Bus:  Okehampton Road stop is right outside their door, served by 52, 452, 6, 187, 302.